Frances Hodgson Burnett Quotes

It is astonishing how short a time it takes for very wonderful things to happen.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done then they begin to hope it can be done then they see it can be done-then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
We do not believe until we want a thing and feel that we shall die if it is not granted to us and then we kneel and believe.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
She had never been taught to ask permission to do things, and she knew nothing at all about authority, so she would not have thought it necessary to ask Mrs. Medlock if she might walk about the house, even if she had seen her.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
One of the strangest things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live for ever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender, solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one's head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvelous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one's heart stands still at the strange, unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun - which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands of years. One knows it then for a moment or so. And one knows it sometimes when one stands by oneself in a wood at sunset and the mysterious deep gold stillness slanting through and under the branches seems to be saying slowly again and again something one cannot quite hear, however much one tries. Then sometimes the immense quiet of the dark blue at night with millions of stars waiting and watching makes one sure; and sometimes a sound of far-off music makes it true; and sometimes a look in someone's eyes.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I know what it is to be hungry, and it is very hard when one cannot even pretend it away. -Sara
Frances Hodgson Burnett
It's a lonely place. Sometimes it's the loneliest place in the world.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
You can lose a friend in springtime easier than any other season if you're too curious.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
What does it say?" asked my lord."It says, `Good-night, God keep you all the night!'--just what she used to say when we were together. Every night she used to say that to me, and every morning she said, `God bless you all the day!' So you see I am quite safe all the time----
Frances Hodgson Burnett
How is it that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language that is not made up of words & everything in this world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything & it can always speak, without making a sound, to another soul.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable, determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I dare say it is rather hard to be a rat,” she mused. “Nobody likes you. People jump and run away and scream out: ‘Oh, a horrid rat!’ I shouldn’t like people to scream and jump and say: ‘Oh, a horrid Sara!’ the moment they saw me, and set traps for me, and pretend they were dinner. It’s so different to be a sparrow. But nobody asked this rat if he wanted to be a rat when he was made. Nobody said: ‘Wouldn’t you rather be a sparrow?
Frances Hodgson Burnett
you are going to be sent home....I 'm glad of it but where's HOME ?
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Dr. Warren was of the mental build of the man whose life would be interesting and full of outlook if it were spent on a desert island or in the Bastille.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
When a man is overcome by anger, he has a poisoned fever. He loses his strength, he loses his power over himself and over others. He throws away time in which he might have gained the end he desires. The is no time for anger in the world. - The Ancient One
Frances Hodgson Burnett
At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
How is it that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The great strength she had used in the old days to conquer and subdue, to win her will and to defend her way, seemed now a power but to protect the suffering and uphold the weak, and this she did, not alone in hovels but in the brilliant court and world of fashion, for there she found suffering and weakness also, all the more bitter and sorrowful since it dared not cry aloud.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts--just mere thoughts--are as powerful as electric batteries--as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live... surprising things can happen to any one who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place."Where you tend a rose, my lad, A thistle cannot grow.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Perhaps you can feel if you can’t hear,” was her fancy. “Perhaps kind thoughts reach people somehow, even through windows and doors and walls. Perhaps you feel a little warm and comforted, and don’t know why, when I am standing here in the cold and hoping you will get well and happy again.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
We trifle with France and labour with Germany, we sentimentalize over Italy and ecstacise over Spain- but England we love.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Nothing in the world is so strong as a kind heart
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Why, we are just the same - I am only a little girl like you. It's just an accident that I am not you, and you are not me!
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The sun is shining - the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The flower are growing - the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being alive is the Magic - being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me - the Magic is in me. It is in me - it is in me. In every one of us.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Of course there must be lots of magic in the world but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sence enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us - like electricity and horses and steam.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
You said th' Magic was in my back. Th' doctor calls it rheumatics.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Magic is in her just as it is in Dickon," said Colin. "It makes her think of ways to do things - nice things.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world, but people don't know what it is like or how to make it.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I am sure there is Magic in everything, only we have not sense enough to get hold of it and make it do things for us
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The mere fact that Lottie had come and gone away again made things seem a little worse-just as perhaps prisoners feel a little more desolate after visitors come and go, leaving them behind.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
If you keep doing it everyday as regularly as soldiers go through drill, we shall see what will happend and find out if the experiment succeeds. You learn things by saying them over and over and thinking about them until they stay in your mind for ever, and I think it will be the same with Magic. If you keep calling it to come to you and help you, it will get to be part of you and it will stay and do things.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
...if He made us, He must know He is to blame when He has made us weak or evil. And He must understand why we have been so made, and when we throw ourselves into the dust before Him, and pray for help and pardon, surely--surely He will lend an ear!
Frances Hodgson Burnett
They're a pair of young Satans.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Two worst things as can happen to a child is never to have his own way - or always to have it.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Thoughts -- just mere thoughts -- are as powerful as electric batteries -- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Of course there must be lots of Magic in the world," he said wisely one day, "but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. Perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. I am going to try and experiment.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
If you fill your mind with a beautiful thought, there will be no room in it for an ugly one. - King Amor
Frances Hodgson Burnett
There is nothing so nice as supposing. It's almost like being a fairy. If you suppose anything hard enough it seems as if it were real.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
He sat down in his chair by the fire and began to chat, as was his habit before he and his wife parted to dress for dinner. When he was out during the day he often looked forward to these chats, and made notes of things he would like to tell his Mary. During her day, which was given to feminine duties and pleasures, she frequently did the same thing. Between seven and eight in the evening they had delightful conversational opportunities. He picked up her book and glanced it over, he asked her a few questions and answered a few...
Frances Hodgson Burnett
…Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"..."It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I wish I was friends with things," he said at last, "but I'm not. I never had anything to be friends with, and I can't bear people.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
She liked books more than anything else, and was, in fact, always inventing stories of beautiful things and telling them to herself.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Never did she find anything so difficult as to keep herself from losing her temper when she was suddenly disturbed while absorbed in a book.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
She did not care very much for other little girls, but if she had plenty of books she could console herself.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
I am writing in the garden. To write as one should of a garden one must write not outside it or merely somewhere near it, but in the garden.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Hang in there. It is astonishing how short a time it can take for very wonderful things to happen.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts- just mere thoughts- are as powerful as electric batteries- as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got you in you may never get over it as long as you live.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
My mother always says people should be able to take care of themselves, even if they're rich and important.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that—warm things, kind things, sweet things—help and comfort and laughter—and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.
Frances Hodgson Burnett
Whatever comes," she said, "cannot alter one thing. If I am a princess in rags and tatters, I can be a princess inside. It would be easy to be a princess if I were dressed in cloth of gold, but it is a great deal more of a triumph to be one all the time when no one knows it.
Frances Hodgson Burnett